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ananyo writes "Researchers have been shocked to find a record-breaking phytoplankton bloom hidden under Arctic ice. The finding is a big surprise — few scientists thought blooms of this size could grow in Arctic waters. The finding implies that the Arctic is much more productive than previously thought — researchers now think some 25% of the Arctic Ocean has conditions conducive to such blooms (abstract). The discovery also helps to explain why Arctic waters have proven such a good carbon dioxide sink."

Most people are full of themselves. Only the unlucky ones need transplants, and then they need all sorts of nasty medicines to keep themselves healthy. Thank you, I'd rather be full of myself than that.

Most people are full of themselves. Only the unlucky ones need transplants, and then they need all sorts of nasty medicines to keep themselves healthy. Thank you, I'd rather be full of myself than that.

You are completely right about that, I was prescribe amphetamine to treat my ADD, I became a douche as a side effect and learned that being full of oneself rocks. I got more promotion in the last year of medicinal amphetamine than I got in that interval : [started working, started taking l-lysine-d-amphetamine], I got to assfuck my gf for the first time in 5 year, bought a sport car and renovated my house. Yeah being a douche, full of myself, rocks !

Of course, you'll come back with the lame, intellectually weak "both sides do it" crap. That's how it works these days. You can be on the team represented by millions of dollars of corporate propaganda that in the most nasty of ways paints the entire climatology community as a sinister lying bunch of mooching conspirators--while on the other hand, science can have one or two people who made honest mistakes that don't really affect the big picture of whether AGW is real--and you'll say, uh, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Sorry, you can't split the difference between reasonable and batshit stupid / evil and call it a wash. Face the music. You're a mark. And you did not disappoint the ones who played you. Congrats.

You make a false equivalence here. Both sides have clowns, but one side has the vast majority of publishing scientists and the royal scientific societies in many nations. Only one side, as i have seen it, argues with data. Also, to my knowledge only one side has stooped to using pr firms with ties to the tobacco industry.

I've seem people spout ignorance, use logical fallacies, repeat lies, but never a scientifically valid critique. There have been several in mainstream science, but they where looked at and proven not to actually be valid when compared with the data. That's science.

For the same reason they have such certainty about the things they think they "know". The whole global warming debate is a fascinating study of human psychology.

It is very interesting to be sure. On slashdot folks get moded down for even a sideways critique of Global Warming. What this world is coming too.

Mode parent up!!

It's the same for most controversial issues on Slashdot. Creationism vs Evolutionism for example. Post an comment that isn't in full support of evolution and you probably won't be able to count the milliseconds before you're at -1 and have 20 people calling you and idiot (or worse). This community is no different from any other community across the world really, it just thinks it is.

Precisely. It's a giddy pleasure at gleaning another bit about our wonderful universe. Any decent scientist recognizes how little we know about the world, and every little bit we find out is a wonderful little treat. A better question is why most people think that being amazed by new discoveries is a negative...

It's not really a new discovery when it's really just your assumptions, that nobody asked for, that turned out to be wrong. Unless you're Ralph Wiggums or something. But hey, while intellectuals are mostly slaves for power they might as well get "giddy" about finding bits of knowledge they are actually allowed to use, looking at the vast oceans of things we know but don't put to action, so millions and billions of people are creamed continually, we all need something to keep us distracted and pseudo-happy.

Read whatever the fuck you want into it, you'd prolly do that either way.

But actually, "the party" was a reference to Nineteen-Eightyfour. You know, science being suspended on her say so, the sun revolving around the Earth and all that? But if you must know re:9/11... the funny way materials melt/break and then disappear, or the way passports are picked out of exploded planes, or the way Bush saw the second plane hit the tower because "the TV was obviously on", and Colin Powell's sweaty, badly acted presen

Oh, one thing though: Well, by "so yeah, there's plenty examples of that in real life" didn't mean to say "The Naked Emperor" is a real life example: but that IMHO there are examples of that in real life. And it would be pointless to bicker out individual details of it, at least when it's outside your comfort zone... you likely wouldn't even had blinked if I had said that about the Soviet Union or China, go figure.

Still, fuck proofreading. If I proofread too much, I ALWAYS end up shrugging and thinking "why

Maybe it's because scientists search, look, explore, measure, reason, and try to understand what and how and maybe even why things are the way they are; the surprise or shock comes from the unexpected, just like in real life - as distinct from the many here who apparently already know everything worth knowing about anything worth knowing about.

Scientifically, it's called decomposition [wikipedia.org] and it happens in the presence of oxygen and other organisms that reduce the dead organism to basic components. Particularly, with plants it releases carbon dioxide.

In an environment without oxygen, somewhat different processes happen and you can indeed have carbon trapped for useful periods of time.

You're making a false assumption: that the plankton rot when they die. Not everything does. There has to be the right environment for whatever bacteria or biological processes involved in rotting to take place. In many places, the right environment is not there. In the desert, it is too dry. Corpses mummify instead of rot. In peat bogs, there isn't enough oxygen, so things just more or less lie there. In these cases, the desert and the bog are carbon sinks. In the arctic, the ocean water is not terr

That would only be true if the plankton were buried and did not rot. Same as trees.

Unless you're going nuclear or launching it into space, nothing permanently gets rid of it. Plants just take CO2 and H2O and strip off the O into the air and use the CH for building material and energy storage. It's all going to go back into the pot again eventually no matter what you do with it.

"Sequestering" carbon in any way is about the same as "squestering" trash by burying it in the dump. Just gets it out of sight fo

"Sequestering" carbon in any way is about the same as "squestering" trash by burying it in the dump. Just gets it out of sight for awhile, you gotta think about the future.

There's a huge difference between having to deal with
global warming now (especially the catastrophes claimed by some) than a slightly elevated CO2 a few millennia or longer from now. Getting it out of sight for a while may well be the difference between being a problem now and never being a problem.

Not really.Few sane people would argue that a slightly elevated CO2 count is a problem. Few would argue a highly elevated one isn't a problem.The question is where on the scale do we lie?If we could spread out what would be a highly elevated CO2 dump out over several thousand years then the short term highly elevated problem becomes a very long term very slightly elevated one and there is no problem for anyone.Put it another way, the first cave man to build a fire did not cause global warming. The first ste

>>>"Sequestering" carbon in any way is about the same as "squestering" trash by burying it in the dump. Just gets it out of sight for awhile, you gotta think about the future.

Disagree.The carbon was VERY well sequestered for ~700 million years..... until humans came-along and start digging it out of coal mountains/oil wells and burning it. If humans had not done that, the carbon would still be sequestered under the ground and GW not an issue.

If you can converted back into a liquid, you can get it out of the air*. While technically in the environment, being buried thousand of feet underground is a lot better then floating around in the air.

Exactly. This is also why we know that the excess carbon in the atmosphere is sourced from fossil fuels- gas and oil. Carbon has 3 sotopes 12, 13 and radioactive 14.Carbon in the atmosphere has all three in a certain percentage. Carbon that has been buried underground for a few million years - in the form of oil- has had all it's radioactive 14 changed to nitrogen. When it's burned again in our cars and smokestacks, the newly released non-14 carbon increases the percentage of isotopes 12 and 13 in the at

This is also why we know that the excess carbon in the atmosphere is sourced from fossil fuels- gas and oil. Carbon has 3 sotopes 12, 13 and radioactive 14.Carbon in the atmosphere has all three in a certain percentage. Carbon that has been buried underground for a few million years - in the form of oil- has had all it's radioactive 14 changed to nitrogen. When it's burned again in our cars and smokestacks, the newly released non-14 carbon increases the percentage of isotopes 12 and 13 in the atmosphere rel

In contrast, current annual fossil fuel burning amounts to about 6 Gt of carbon. About half of this amount is observed as an increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The
other half is sequestered by other compartments. Currently, both the oceans and the terrestrial system show a net uptake of carbon [6]. The oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of individual components, in particular air-CO2 provide a potentially powe

What typically happens is once the plankton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. If it lands in an anaerobic area (a region of low oxygen, which is not uncommon on the sea floor) then it will not rot. Over time, it could be covered with sediments and blocked off from the rest of the sea. Over the course of millions of years, the dead plankton may be cooked at 70-80 degrees and transform into oil and gas. Once in this liquid or gas form, it can move from this source material. If it is caught in a trap, then it could become an economic oil or gas deposit several dozen million years in the future.

In contrast, most trees fall and rot on the ground. The amazon rainforest is a big area with lots of trees and plants, but there is also lots of organisms actively decomposing the dead material. Some carbon can get stuck in the ground, but it tends to be much less than the sea.

Um... most plankton get eaten. Then those that eat it get eaten and so on up the food chain. Those that do die uneaten, along with their predators that die, sink to the bottom of the ARCTIC. Stuff doesn't rot down there. It just piles up frozen.

Do you like the smell of smog? I would hazard a guess that you do not. Fine, you don't believe in global warming. I disagree with you, but won't bother to argue the point. Maybe you should jump on the green bandwagon for the better quality environment it provides you? Stuff like smog, acid rain, and the hole in the ozone layer have become less of a problem because we implemented 'sweeping policy changes' and 'engineering measures' to solve the issue.

Oil is going away, shouldn't we figure out what to do next?

Isn't energy efficiency better that waste?

What exactly about the global warming policies do you disagree with that wouldn't lead to a cleaning, smarter, stronger future?

Climate models are accurate. But you don't understand how models work.Can new data change a current view? yes. Does that mean all views are wrong? no.

The climate model is working pretty well.

And large blooms mean the situation is worse, not better.There is a lot we don't know about gravity, does that mean we should throw out the current model of gravity?A lot is unknown about germs, does this mean we throw out are model of germ theory?

Apparently there is a huge resevoir of Methane under both the polar and south polar icecaps. It's a biological chemical useful for bio-ecosystems. But also as it's released it will reduce global temperatures.

It's a large part of why it's called "Climate Change", and not "Global Warming".